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The PR budget is based on what is often an unspoken assumption: that getting the word ‘out there’ through web content and the media will help sell whatever it is you have to sell. But does it? Now that I’ve seen it from both the agency and corporate side, here’s what I’ve learned.

The good news is that it really does seem like PR works. More and more, I’m hearing anecdotes about sales that resulted from PR placements and campaigns. This is really cool – that is to say, it’s gratifying that my work and the work of our agency is paying off. But those are just anecdotes, after all. The measurement that really gets me excited is…

You can correlate PR campaigns with web traffic. I’ve had the opportunity lately see something simple that not many PR folks do: correlate web traffic data to press releases. For the most part, PR works – you actually do see a spike in web traffic when you put out a press release. But what you don’t necessarily see is a big spike that you can attribute directly to what we spend the most time seeking: feature placement in a major medi a outlet. What’s the deal with that? Should we not bother? Um, no… because when you think about it, you realize that…

Your goal is more than web traffic. Or maybe it wasn’t web traffic at all. Maybe it was awareness. A VP of Marketing at a startup once told a colleague of mine that his goal for PR was knowing recognition of the new company by whoever sat next to him on the airplane. Perhaps fortunes are made of such awareness. Another tech executive recounted that it was always clear to prospects that their technology was a superior solution – but only after an hour-long PowerPoint. How do you measure when PR raises awareness, or tells a story that accelerates time to sale?

Unfortunately, measurement tends to be expensive and time consuming. You’ve got so much time in the day, only so many people to do the work. You have to make choices: should I do the work, or measure it?

Awareness: aided and unaided awareness of PR-driven messages, pre-and post campaign, or simply 2X per year. Answer is based on direct surveys of selected target market.

Web traffic: If the web traffic increases following an announcement or campaign, it means something in the message caused someone to take action. Action is good.

Inquiries: Correlate number of sales inquiries to PR campaigns, however those inquiries arrive.

Time to sale: OK, so it’d be hard for PR to take credit for this, but what if you could measure average time to sale across the business, then up the ante on your awareness and thought leadership campaigns, and then see if you had an impact on time to sale. Wouldn’t that be cool…as in really, really valuable?

Sales: Maybe you can only measure this by anecdote. Maybe there’s a way code PR related referrals that lead to sales into salesforce automation systems.

Let’s discuss:

We don’t live in an ideal world, of course, so here’s the study question:

What should you measure to get the most bang for the buck – to know the program is working and help you make better decisions for next time?

I’ve been turning over in my mind a social media survey highlighted this week in eMarketer. The study surveyed nearly 2,000 social media marketers on what works and what doesn’t in their world. For example, social media marketers see these strategies and tactics as an effective way to do things that have typically fallen into the realm of public relations — influence brand reputation and increase brand awareness — as well as digital marketing practices to increase website traffic and search engine rankings. They report less effectiveness at improving internal communications, generating leads and increasing online sales.

Marketing Sherpa Study, posted by eMarketer

Perhaps more telling are their responses on their ability to measure social media effectiveness. In a nutshell, that which the marketers feel are the most effective tactics are deemed the least accurately measured.

From a corporate communications standpoint, the study highlights the dilemma of where and how to invest in social media. The most effective social tactics appear to be seen by respondents as only marginally more measurable than that traditonal media relations — where you counted clips and assumed they were having an impact on awareness and attitudes (and while the web makes this more cost effective, most businesses do not have or spend the resources to directly measure impact of media relations on customers).

And yet…and yet…

It’s clear that we believe this stuff is working, just like PR has always worked, and maybe even more so.

There is not doubt that corporations ignore the online communications channel at their peril. If only from a crisis preparedness standpoint, no company should want to risk becoming the next big case study on what happens when blogs and social networks your gaffe goes viral. That’s a good place to start.

Beyond that, if you don’t look, you won’t see. In an uncontroversial environment, the issues won’t be obvious. I have some thoughts on the matter that I’ll save for my next post, but what do you think?

In corporate environments where additional spending is only for initiatives where you can demonstrate a return, what opportunities does corporate communications miss when they don’t engage with social media?